Appalachia, and: Florida Scrapbook, and: season of the witch (revisited), and: Waiting, and; Saying the Names

Appalachia

I

My father draws black lung. I favor him but act myself. When I get older I’ll build a cabin and just live in it.

II

My cousin says if the mountains could talk they would speak wisdom. I feel that way. I feel there are secrets that the body can never know.

III

Old Carlos went down until he weighed 90 lbs—and died. All his hair gone. We went over to where they had him it was night. I stayed out by the front. What if his spirit had sat up what would that look have looked like? It could surprise you. It might have felt as if you knew there was a Jesus Christ and he was coming for you someday.

Florida Scrapbook

My cousin claims that although his father broke bones mine was far meaner I don’t know    I never think much about that

Stringing sheets across my cell Searching the least bit of air as I lay in bed at night wet from cool showers, waiting

He did push me down the stairs once

You say you love me but are you able to name the one moment in life that I’m terrified of Trick question: Every moment terrifies me! On the compound a junkie at a payphone Trying to take his family for money: I’m in trouble, the guy says; they’re holding me in Protective Custody It’s practice for him, I guess, or like waking up and washing his face Junkies will beat anyone for anything they can Help, he begs, this one could end in death Meanwhile, I’ve read in books that cattle bred in the Panhandle a hundred years ago,

   and I don’t know this to be a fact,

Were dying not from disease caused by mosquitoes but blood lost to mosquitoes

Even then, cow shit and every other form of tiny decay and death was being carried along a deep underground river that flows into the Gulf of Mexico Once, floating on a raft

In the very same Gulf, eyes closed, I suddenly looked out

Pretending, what? A boat wreck—disaster, and me alone and sky for hundreds of miles

Believe this: If you reach inside yourself and find every last piece of light it will mean nothing

For instance, who truly knows how fragile the Aquifer, that underground river feeding Water to Florida’s citizens and emptying cow shit into the Gulf, truly is Here at prison Administration has decided to ration how much Aquifer convicts waste when washing up By installing buttons on each shower that grant us forty seconds of water only We beat the system pull springs from our beds and fix them into seams that seal the rim

So our showers keep running while we sit below on upturned buckets—dreaming But my point is this: That story I tell of waiting with a rifle and staring across fields of snow? Just a fairy tale Yet when I was very young we did stop at a store in Fairlawn for little Pastries—cookies with dabs of jelly in the center and such—and powdered soft rolls We drank tea and ate ham and cheese This was down the street from Hartley’s Pork Pies At my brother-in-law’s mother’s place Some years later, when things had gotten to their lowest We had to live in that house my mother and father and I but not for long we were asked to leave Due to the weight my father pulled with him everywhere like a stinking dog tied to his waist

Long nights give way to fetid mornings with marsh grass growing wild beneath our bunks Why bother to differentiate one from the other

Season of the witch (revisited)

I

amphetamine me the patient whispers or i to her we are all in this

together though you wouldn’t know—she the one floating above the heaven of angels insisting: stitch god’s mouth

shut  i do...